Turning Up Heat On Sweatshops / NY march part of nationwide effor id EAA07283; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 04:55:32 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Fri, 3 Oct 1997 10:59:27 -0700 (PDT) source: David E. Volk Newsday Turning Up Heat On Sweatshops NY march part of nationwide effort By Kenneth C. Crowe. STAFF WRITER Nuns, children from Harlem, retired doctors, college students, rabbis, priests and ministers - along with a dragon from Chinatown and a Mexican dance troupe - tomorrow will march in Manhattan to spark a national dialogue on child labor and exploited workers in the global economy. The "National Day of Conscience to End Sweatshops" will be staged in various forms in 35 cities nationwide. It will be followed by a three-month campaign encouraging grass-roots involvement and seeking 1 million signatures on a petition to President Bill Clinton and Congress calling for an end to sweatshops employing child labor, paying starvation wages and blocking unionization. "We're not running a boycott. What we really want to do is to get people to go after the companies, to get in their face, pressuring them, writing them," said Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee in Support of Worker and Human Rights, based in New York. Yet the committee also plans to produce a list of companies with the worst human rights records to guide shoppers. The National Labor Committee, which gets the majority of its funding from small private foundations and is led by a Jesuit priest, the Rev. James Joyce, has put together a coalition of more than 100 grass-roots community, religious and labor organizations for the campaign, which has been endorsed by the 13-million-member AFL-CIO. The labor federation has been pressing for the inclusion of labor rights standards in international trade agreements. Rather than a mass turnout, Kernaghan said he expected 500 to 1,000 people at tomorrow's march, which he said would attract the type of people corporations hate to see rallying against them. "When they see nuns, children, college students and retired doctors, everyday average people, people of conscience, they go into a panic. They can't say the Sister of Saint Dominic or kids from Columbia are a special-interest group," he said. The march will begin at noon with a rally at the Disney Store on 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue before proceeding to Greeley Square at 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue, where British rock star Billy Bragg will perform. Kernaghan last year led the investigation that revealed Kathie Lee Gifford's line of Wal-Mart clothes was produced in sweatshops in Manhattan and Honduras. It resulted in the formation of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Sweatshop Abuses, scheduled to issue a final report by the end of the year. In April, Clinton endorsed an apparel industry code of conduct barring the use of child labor in factories around the world that make shoes and clothing for the U.S. market. Kernaghan said, "I just came from Haiti, where subcontractors for Disney are paying 28 cents an hour and workers are living in total misery." He said he took with him a pair of Disney 101 Dalmations childrens' pajamas that sells for $19.99 in New York. Workers earned a piece rate totaling 6 cents for assembling its 11 pieces, Kernaghan said. Walt Disney Co. spokesman John Dreyer said contractors providing Disney clothes in Haiti pay a median of 50 cents an hour, well above the minimum wage. He said, "We have a very strict code of conduct for licensees and manufacturers worldwide." ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-10.09.97-04:55:39-12513